The United Kingdom Independence Party (usually shortened to UKIP or Ukip, commonly pronounced "YOU-kip"; the members may be kippers) is one of the UK's political parties. The party in its earliest years was led by Alan Sked (1993-1997) and was a centrist single-issue party to get UK to leave the EU, however Sked left UKIP and complained in the mid-2000s that the party had been taken over by right wing xenophobes with links to the far-right British National Party. Nigel Farage rejected a BNP-UKIP electoral pact in 2008, however UKIP by that time was itself increasingly adopting a hard line opposition to immigration, with Farage becoming the main face of UKIP who spearheaded its anti-multiculturalism and anti-politically correct brand of populism. Academic political scientists now widely consider UKIP to be right-wing populist or "radical right" similar to the Front National and Alternative für Deutschland; Sked has since described UKIP as "a nasty little racist populist party" and "[his own] Frankenstein's monster".[1] Led by Farage (2010-2016), UKIP won the UK's 2014 European parliament election and arguably were the main reason the Brexit referendum took place in June 2016.

UKIP's raison d'être (i.e. UK to leave the European Union) has been achieved and therefore the party post-referendum has sharply declined in its voter-base and membership. After Farage stepped down as leader immediately after the referendum, Putin-admirer Diane James won the leadership election, but only lasted 18 days and shortly afterwards quit the party.[2][3][4] Paul Nuttall became leader in November 2016 and resigned in June 2017. He was replaced by Henry Bolton but Bolton was voted out of this position in February 2018. .[5]

UKIP was founded in 1993 by Alan Sked, but has its origins two years earlier with the Anti-Federalist League, that was formed in 1991 to campaign against the Maastricht Treaty that changed the European Economic Community into the European Union. UKIP was created as a single-issue party for UK to leave the EU; Sked, a professor at the London School of Economics, considered the party originally centrist. He left the party in 1997 and later complained that it had been infiltrated by members with connections to the far-right; a radical-right faction broke away from UKIP in February 2005, named Veritas. However, by the mid-2000s UKIP had arguably itself become right-wing and was competing with the BNP for the anti-immigration vote, thus its 2005 general election manifesto campaigned for zero net-immigration. Led by Nigel Farage (2010-2016) UKIP introduced populism (such as kippers describing themselves as the "People's Army" fighting against the "political elite"), opposes multiculturalism, supports the creation of grammar schools and stresses the negative impacts of immigration, with Farage not only complaining about the economic competition of immigrant labour and overcrowding concerns, but cultural changes brought about by immigrants. With the total collapse of the BNP by 2013, UKIP clearly benefited, however post-referendum UKIP has declined since most people consider the Brexit result in 2016 the end of UKIP since it has achieved its main political objective to get UK to leave the EU. With many kippers recognising this themselves, there was a leadership election in 2017 with several different candidates proposing a new direction for the party. Anne Marie Waters wished to turn UKIP into an anti-Islam party, but failed, leading to the creation of For Britain.

On 9 October 2014, UKIP won its first seat in Westminster, as Douglas Carswell, who had defected from the Tories and resigned as an MP, retained his seat in a byelection.[6] They have also won a number of seats in the European Parliament in previous elections, but they hardly ever show up, let alone vote.[7] So that was useful, then. It will be interesting to see if this tendency will persist after the increase in their seats after the 2014 elections (see below). UKIP also has a number of councillors, winning a handful for the first time in 2013.

As their name implies, they want Britain to leave the European Union, and they were originally a single-issue party dedicated to that goal (although how the transition would be effected was not a point of discussion). A significant cross section of the British population is antipathetic towards the EU, and a competent party will one day convert that fuel into electoral success, but UKIP has to date avoided this trap by being careful not to convey any appearance of moderation or sensibility. They do manage to steal some votes from the Conservative Party (who are too "mainstream" and pro-free market) and the BNP (who are a bit too overtly racist).

Their hardcore stances toward immigration (legal or otherwise), climate skepticism, a flat tax, and social conservatism essentially made them the British Tea Party, operating as a separate party to drag the Tories further right. Following Britain's vote to leave the European Union, many UKIPers (some of whom are former Conservative MPs) have defected to Theresa May's side, now that the Tories have switched off Cameron's dream of a socially-liberal party.[8][9]In spite of all the other stances, Brexit was still their main platform, and it's because of this that its success was political suicide, with UKIP plummeting from the mainstream due to not having Euroscepticism to rely on anymore, and their other stances making them too radical for Conservatives, but not radicalfascist enough for BNPers.

They are more-or-less completely scientifically illiterate, as demonstrated by an interview published in The Guardian, in which Christopher Monckton, their science spokesman at the time (and former deputy leader), proposed that they would cut funding for climate science unless, as they see it, sufficient evidence should arise to change their mind on anthropogenic global warming, which he claims "large sums now squandered on addressing." In the same interview Monckton went on to say that health risks associated with excessive salt consumption are merely "unjustifiable fears" in regards to just one example. When asked on stem cell research, Monckton compared it to "the killing of very small children."[10]

UKIP rejects the recent House of Commons report on homeopathy as an unbalanced and short-sighted dismissal of a branch of medicine that last year treated 54,000 people on the NHS. UKIP endorses the remarks of the Chief Executive of the British Homeopathic Association who pointed out that "the [select committee] inquiry was too narrow in its remit, there is plenty of evidence to support homeopathy, with 100 randomised controlled trials, and many more on outcome measures, which reflect how patients say they feel." UKIP believes that homeopathy has much to offer patients and notes that in a recent survey carried out at England's NHS homeopathic hospitals, some 70 per cent of patients said they felt some improvement after undergoing treatment. UKIP will continue to support homeopathy through the NHS.

UKIP have responded to criticism of this policy by arguing that it is a 2010 statement, while the 2012 policy makes no mention of alternative medicine.[12][13]

The party led by Alan Sked (1993-1997) never campaigned against lowering legal immigration; UKIP's 1997 general election manifesto only noted their policy was to prevent illegal immigration: "Its [UKIP's] policy is therefore to retain and indeed tighten UK borders in order to prevent illegal immigration."[14] By 2001 UKIP had started talking about lowering the number of legal immigrants into UK; although set no limit or target,[15] however at this time it was not a major issue for the party. Sked had left the party in 1997, but in the mid-2000s complained that UKIP had been taken over by a xenophobic party faction that was anti-immigration, with some members having links to the British National Party; in 2004 and 2005 UKIP were described as the "BNP in blazers" for taking a more hard-line view on immigration and flirting for the first time with xenophobia in election leaflets:

Under the headline 'Immigration soaring' , a cartoon depicts 'overcrowded Britain', a shanty-town jumble of houses: across the sea, streams of eastern European immigrants pour into an entrance labelled 'Channel Funnel'.[16]

In their 2005 general election manifesto UKIP campaigned for zero net-immigration, meaning a reduction of over 200,000 legal immigrants into UK a year by "imposing far stricter limits on legal immigrants".[17] Despite UKIP increasingly becoming more against immigrants in their policy and outlook, a radical right-wing populist anti-immigration faction, Veritas, broke away from UKIP in Feburary 2005 that regarded UKIP's immigration policy too soft and was founded on an "[anti-]immigration ticket".[18] Veritas was led by Kilroy-Silk:

Britain's newest political party, Veritas, was launched today on a populist platform of 'straight-talking' and defending the country against asylum, immigration and multiculturalism, under former chatshow host Robert Kilroy-Silk. In a 15-minute debut speech to reporters at Westminster, Mr Kilroy-Silk lambasted Tony Blair and Michael Howard as "liars" and said his new party would be looking for the votes of those who had "been made to feel ashamed of their culture and being British". Mentioning only "mass immigration and uncontrolled asylum" as policy areas, the former TV star and MEP - now on his third political party after spells with Labour and Ukip - bordered on ranting as he repeatedly dismissed the entire British political establishment as liars, before saying the British public were "tired of yah-boo politics".[19]

Veritas' 2005 immigration policy stated "immigrants must speak English, pass health tests, have no criminal convictions and integrate into the British way of life"; a 3-year moratorium (temporary freeze) on legal immigration; with low levels of immigration after the moratorium to be controlled by an Australian-style points system, while deporting illegal immigrants.[20]

Kilroy-Silk left Veritas in July 2005 after disappointing election results and the party ceased contesting elections by 2007; around this time the BNP was polling well and winning local council seats. This led UKIP to clash with the BNP, since both parties were now competing for a similar pool of voters, anxious about immigration. In 2008 some UKIP and BNP members proposed an electoral pact to avoid splitting the anti-immigration vote, but this was refused by Nigel Farage.[21] To try to win over BNP voters, UKIP copied Veritas' immigration policy for their 2010 general election manifesto, but proposed to extend the moratorium on legal immigration from 3 to 5 years, also opposing multiculturalism:

End mass, uncontrolled immigration. UKIP calls for an immediate five-year freeze on immigration for permanent settlement

Ensure that after the five-year freeze, any future immigration for permanent settlement will be on a strictly controlled, points-based system similar to Australia.

All non-work permit visa entrants to the UK will be required to take out adequate health insurance. Those without insurance will be refused entry.

End the active promotion of the doctrine of multiculturalism by local and national government and all publicly funded bodies

Return people found to be living illegally in the UK to their country of origin. There can be no question of an amnesty for illegal immigrants.[22]

Farage has said UKIP tried to replace the BNP at the 2011 by-election in Oldham East and Saddleworth, when UKIP polled 2,029 votes (6%) and the BNP, 1,560 (5%):

“”What we did, starting with the Oldham by-election in the North of England is for the first time ever try to deal with the BNP question by going out and saying to BNP voters, if you are voting BNP because you are frustrated, upset with the change in your community, but you are doing it holding your nose because you don't agree with their racist agenda, come and vote for us. I would think that we have probably taken a third of the BNP vote directly from them.

In the 2011 and 2012 local elections, UKIP made noticeable gains for the first time in councils, while the BNP vote collapsed and they lost nearly all their councillors; Farage considers UKIP to have taken 1/3 of former BNP voters. According to Matthew Goodwin: "There is a clear relationship between the rise of UKIP in local elections and the disintegration of the BNP".[24] With the virtual disappearance of the BNP by 2013, UKIP toned-down their anti-immigration policy because they no longer had to compete with the BNP to secure votes from the electorate anxious about immigration; for example UKIP's 2015 general election manifesto somewhat changed their 2010 policy to freeze legal immigration for 5 years to a "five-year moratorium on immigration for unskilled workers", so that immigrants with skills and professions could still enter the country. Furthermore, UKIP in 2015 no longer claimed they would deport illegal immigrants, but detain them by increasing holding and accommodation arrangements.[25]

In 2004, Kellie Maloney (then Frank Maloney), a UKIP candidate for London mayor said she would not campaign in the borough of Camden because it had "too many gays," that gay people don't do a lot for society and "there is a problem with gay parades."[28] Ironically she later came out as transgender.[29]

In the European Parliament, the UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom decided to call former UKIP MEP Nikki Sinclaire "a queer."[30]

In 2012, while campaigning in Soho (the hub of London's gay community), UKIP's press officer Gawain Towler tweeted a photo of a man setting light to a photograph of the openly gay candidate Liberal Democrat candidate Brian Paddick.[31]

Winston McKenzie, UKIP candidate for Croydon North, saying gay adoption is "unhealthy,"[32] is a form of "child abuse"[33] and that children adopted by gay parents are "thrown away to the dogs."[34]

Another then-UKIP candidate — Julia Gasper — suggested that gay people should "stop complaining and start thanking straight people," because apparently gay people need to show a bit more gratitude for being born in the first place.[35] Dr Gasper also claimed on a private UKIP forum that gay people frequently engaged in sex with animals, and "[a]s for the links between homosexuality and paedophilia, there is so much evidence that even a full-length book could hardly do justice to the ­subject", a statement agreed to by UKIP member Jan Zolyniak.[36]

In the run up to the 2013 local elections, candidate John Sullivan was found to have published on Facebook a post claiming that "Victorian" physical exercise regimes in schools would prevent people from being gay (completely oblivious to the 'gym bunny' stereotype in gay culture) and praising the Russian government for banning Pride marches.[37]

In January 2014 Henley on Thames UKIP councillor and Fred Phelps wannabe David Silvester was suspended from the party after writing a letter to the local paper laying the blame for the winter 2013/2014 floods in the UK on the legalisation of gay marriage.[38]

In May 2014, Dave Small, UKIP's councillor for Redditch borough council, was discovered to have posted racist and homophobic comments on Facebook including the following: "Why on earth is this useless Government pandering to Puffs? I refuse to call them gays, as what has gay to do with Perverts like Elton John and Clair Balding who get their jollies in such disgusting ways. To sum up, they should not allowed to be married, they should go back to the closet." Small's Facebook posts also concluded that Muslim immigrants were responsible for the spread of tuberculosis and that Muslims in Birmingham were "jabbering in an alien voice".[39] Small was dropped by the party, but not before it was revealed that he used to edit 'Blues Zulu' magazine, a Birmingham City fanzine. In this capacity, he was arrested for inciting racial hatred following an article entitled "Fucking foreigners" which criticised various foreign-born football players and managers.[40]

In 2015, despite being the only major political party not to address LGBT issues within its manifesto (claiming the party is not "driven by the needs of differing special interests groups"),[41] the party has stated that it will not "un-marry" same-sex couples, despite opposing same-sex marriage in the first place. The party's mini-manifesto for Christians also supported a religious conscience clause, not dissimilar to the anti-LGBT "religious freedom" laws in the US.[42][43]

In 2015 it was reported that then UKIP leader Nigel Farage supported Father Tadeusz Rydzyk, a Polish priest who has been described as both homophobic and anti-Semitic (note the irony when you look in the next section) and who said of the election of the first openly gay Polish MP "the sodomites are coming; this is a very serious matter."[44]

Despite Farage's claim that UKIP is a "party of freethinkers," in January 2013, UKIP fired Olly Neville, leader of UKIP youth organisation ('Young Independence') after he stated that he supported gay marriage.[45][46] Richard Lowe, UKIP candidate for Chester, also had to resign after he supported gay marriage.[47] Homophobia also occasionally seeps from the UKIP official forums.[48][49]

Despite originally being allowed to participate in 2015 Pride in London, UKIP were banned from the celebrations due to safety concerns as many in the LGBT community rightly questioned why UKIP should be allowed to march, given their anti-gay views.[50] Despite this, a handful of LGBTQ* in UKIP members did get involved in the event.[51]

Perhaps to clean up their image following the parade of homophobic nutjobs (sorry "freethinkers") who have stood for election on the UKIP ticket, UKIP approved an 'LGBTQ* in UKIP' group, who thus far seem to have done very little other than grumble about how there aren't enough sane "socially liberal" people in UKIP[52] and has revelled in the Tory homophobia over the Sadiq Khan/Zac Goldsmith mayoral campaign in London, accusing him of being an "Islamist scumbag" and saying voting for Khan is "like cutting our own heads off"[53] – not a subtle reference to Daesh's beheadings at all.

The general attitude to foreigners and racial/ethnic minorities is summed up by this quote from Paul Wiffen, the now-former UKIP London chairman:[54]

You Left-wing scum are all the same, wanting to and our birthright to Romanian gypsies who beat their wives and children into begging and stealing money they can gamble with, Muslim nutters who want to kill us and put us all under medieval Sharia law, the same Africans who sold their Afro-Caribbean brothers into a slavery that Britain was the first to abolish.

Don't let UKIP critics fool you into thinking that the party is racist though. Consider this:[55][56][57]

Have you noticed that if you ­rearrange the letters in ‘illegal ­immigrants,’ and add just a few more letters, it spells, ‘Go home you free-loading, benefit-grabbing, resource-sucking, baby-making, non-English-speaking ********* and take those other hairy-faced, sandal-wearing, bomb-making, camel-riding, goat-fucking raghead ******** with you.

Upon reading this, you might think that the man whose Facebook account this appeared on — that of Chris Pain, UKIP leader of Lincolnshire council — is a raving racist nutjob. But obviously it's because his Facebook got hacked.

Disgraced TV presenter Robert Kilroy-Silk was elected as a UKIP MEP in 2004 (he later left the party); his comments on anyone who isn't English are particularly telling.[58]

Of course, one must avoid jumping to conclusions. For instance, a former UKIP candidate for Somerset, Alex Wood, came under sharp fire in the press after he had been tagged on a photo in which many people thought he was giving a Nazi salute, but it later turned out that he had been (in context with other photos) "imitating a pot[ted] plant".[59] Police also confirmed that other racist comments ostensibly on his Facebook, which suggested that all Africans lived in mud huts, had not been posted by Wood and, in fact, never existed on his actual account in the first place, having been hoaxed through photoshop or a puppet account.[60] Suspicions currently lie on Joshua Bonehill-Paine, a notorious troll and sockpuppeteer who was more recently arrested for imitating Wood during a Twitter abuse scandal in April 2015.[61]The Mirror, which originated the accusations of racism, subsequently apologized for the error.[62] Wood has since left the party.

On the other hand, East Sussex candidate Anna-Marie Crampton faced a hailstorm of criticism in 2013 after posts were made on her Facebook citing a falsified book to defend the existence of the Illuminati and a Zionist conspiracy behind WWII, which she also claimed were made by Facebook hackers.[63] While there hasn't seemed to have been an investigation into the matter, perhaps a lesson in good password etiquette is in order.

In a May 2014 interview Farage claimed that he would feel "concerned" if Romanian people moved next door to him. When asked what the difference is between the Romanian people and his German national wife and children, he jokingly answered "you know the difference."[64] The day after the interview, he expanded on this assertion, discussing the high crime rate in the Romanian community.[65] He then double tracked on both of these assertions, claiming his mistake was due to tiredness.[66]

Ukip MEP Bill Etheridge is a fan of golliwogs, widely considered a racist caricature of black people.[67]

Other items for review: ceasing all free IVF treatment on the NHS; cutting unecessary waste e.g the destruction of drugs in care homes when residents move on to the next care home or the next world; the pregnancy abortion time limit; compulsory abortion when the foetus is detected as having Downs, Spina Bifida or similar syndrome which, if it is born, could render the child a burden on the state as well as on the family.

After the revelation of Clark's mandatory-abortions-for-disabled-foetuses plan, he was promptly dropped as UKIP candidate. Good to see that the party rigorously checks the quality and sanity of their candidates before they stand for election.

Nigel Farage, in an attempt to wash away the shit-my-dad-says-grumblesponge image of UKIP, claimed the 2010 manifesto was "drivel", citing that "he didn't read it".[69]. Ignoring both (A) the fact that Nigel Farage wrote the foreword to the UKIP 2010 Manifesto, as well as co-authored some of the policies[70] and (B) the more problematic issue of implying that he approved a list of policies to campaign on for both his party and as a man trying to become Prime Minister, without reading (or much caring for) exactly what it was he was campaigning for.

UKIP's European Parliament members are often moderately entertaining, when they bother to show up. Highlights include:

Nigel Farage referring to Belgium as a "non-country" and telling EU President Herman Van Rompuy that he has "a loathing for the very concept of the existence of nation states" and stated that Van Rompuy had "the charisma of a damp rag."[71]

UKIP won the largest share of the votes (27.5%) in the election, followed by the Labour (25.4%) and the Conservative party (23.9%). This increased the number of their MEPs to 24.[76] While the eurosceptic bloc is still a long way from power, it will unfortunately force people to take them a teensy bit more seriously.

UKIP won its first seat in the House of Commons when Clacton's incumbent MP, Douglas Carswell, defected from the Conservative Party (UK) and won 59.75 percent of the vote.[6]

UKIP then went on to win their second seat in the House of Commons when the incumbent MP for Rochester and Strood, Mark Reckless, also defected from the Conservative Party (UK) and won 42.1 percent of the vote.

Mark Reckless lost his seat to his conservative rival Kelly Tolhurst, leaving only Douglas Carswell in the Commons. However, the party increased its share of the vote to 3,881,129, a swing of +9.5% on 2010. Nigel Farage had repeatedly said that he would stand down from the leadership if he failed to win his South Thanet seat. He didn't win the seat and made a video saying he would stand down as leader, but later said that the UKIP Executive had not accepted his resignation and he would remain as leader. He also suggested that even if his leadership resignation had been allowed, he would have run for leadership again in the autumn of 2015. This caused an embarrassing internal spat for UKIP, after which most of Farage's opposition (of former aides) was quietly purged.

If the British media were to be believed, UKIP seemed to have a serious claim on taking the safe Labour seat of Oldham West and Royston at the by-election in December 2015. Reality then emerged and Labour won the seat with an increased majority. At first Farage blamed this on an "Asian bloc vote" and that too many constituents did not speak English. Later it was apparently due to crooked postal votes. A good loser is Nigel.[77][78]

UKIP naturally campaigned for the UK to leave the EU during the 2016 Brexit referendum, their biggest stunt being the sailing of a group of fishing vessels up the Thames,[79] and their most vile being the notorious "breaking point" poster.[80]

Nigel Farage quit the leadership after the 2016 Brexit referendum, and in September 2016 he was replaced by Diane James, a member of the European Parliament for South East England since 2014.[81] Before then, she had served as an Independent councillor and made a strong showing for Ukip in the 2013 Eastleigh by-election but came second to the Lib Dems. In 2015 she attracted some controversy for expressing admiration for Vladimir Putin's fierce nationalism.[82] She also defended Farage's possibly racist election posters, but in her favour she doesn't like the odious Welsh Ukip assembly member Neil Hamilton.[83] She failed to advance any policies during her leadership campaign[84] so it's hard to know exactly what she stands for other than nationalism and opposition to immigration. She has a degree in business and before entering politics she worked in private healthcare.[85]
James resigned from the role of leader of the party after a mere 18 days, which begs the question, why even bother?[86] No worries though, a new leader will be elected soon enough. Steven Woolfe, the party favourite, has thrown his hat into the ring and is sure to succeed James as leader - provided, of course, that he manages to get his forms in on time this time.[87] You'd think he wouldn't let anything stand in his way this time around. Right?

Party leader Paul Nuttall made himself a national laughing stock in February 2017 while running as a candidate in the byelection for the Stoke-on-Trent Central parliamentary seat. His claim on his website that he lost friends in the Hillsborough football stadium disaster in 1989 were queried by his former school, who said he hadn't been there; and he stated (again on his website) to have been invited onto the board of a charity - he hadn't[88]. His Hillsborough comments caused two UKIP members in Merseyside to quit the party, citing his "crass insensitivity" - which is rather odd as UKIP have been all about crass insensitivity from the outset.[89]

Nuttall stepped down as UKIP leader in June 2017, following the party's failure to win any seats in the general election. Steve Crowther became acting leader.[90]

Bolton, a former soldier and police officer who received an OBE for work in Afghanistan, became leader of UKIP on 29 September 2017.[91] He rapidly became more known for his personal life than any political success, when he left his Russian wife Tatiana Smurova-Bolton after starting a relationship with 25 year old model Jo Marney (Bolton was 54). This became even more controversial when it was revealed that before they met, Marney had made racist comments about Meghan Markle, the mixed-race fiancée of Prince Harry.[92] Bolton broke off the relationship but still faced calls to quit from the party's governing national executive committee and other party members.[93] He was removed from his position in February 2018. [94]

Amongst the party's current critics is its original founder Alan Sked, who called it "morally dodgy" and accused it of focusing too much on opposing Islam and immigration rather than on other issues such as the economy.[95]

UKIP is also one of the only parties to receive substantial criticism on aesthetic grounds, largely as a result of its unfortunate decision to pick fuchsia as an official colour. Reading their garish, multicoloured campaign material[96] can cause temporary blindness. It is also questionable that UKIP is an anti-EU party, with seats in the EU Parliament. This becomes doubly bizarre when you consider the possibility of them causing mischief with their far-right friends in the Europe of Freedom and Democracy group.

In 2010, Lord Pearson, then a UKIP leader, told voters in Somerset to avoid UKIP candidates and vote for Conservatives instead.[97] It's quite a feat when your own Lords are telling people not to vote for you...

In the run up to the elections in May 2014, UKIP released a leaflet which exploited D-Day war dead for their own political gain. This was in bad taste even by The Sun's standards.[98]

The BNP hate UKIP for stealing their anti-EU thunder and devoted considerable effort in UKIP's early days to messing them up. Fortunately, UKIP were sufficiently incompetent to do quite a good job all on their own. UKIP and BNP's stated policies are very similar,[99] the difference being that the BNP are Nazi chancers and UKIP are horribly sincere about everything.

UKIP attempts to distance themselves from other British extremists were somewhat undermined when their Thanet South branch followed in the footsteps of the EDL[100] and mistook Westminster Cathedral, no less, for a mosque.[101] "The people's army are not all wholly trained," responded Farage.[102]